How to Get Shot By a Stranger: My Continuing Venom for Most SUV Drivers in the 'Burbs

Having gotten my driver's license in college and spending more of that time driving in Atlanta (a major city), I'll admit to having some road rage. In fact, my entire family has a degree of road rage. See, unlike many people of their age, my parents do not drive "like Maw Maw & Pap Paw." They HATE people who drive like that on the roads! Hell, my father is a former truck driver & owned a black Camaro. He's also the one who ended up teaching me how to drive after I felt it was impossible & had a fear of doing it.

My sister also ended up getting in numerous car accidents as a teen (including a near total of her new car when I was a senior & her front seat passenger, weeks before the prom; luckily, we were not injured as if the car that hit us had been going much faster, we could have crashed into a nearby power pole). Her driving scared the Hell out of me when we were younger but now, she still doesn't play around & will freely curse out the slow drivers. She doesn't drive like anybody's fat, old, harpy, bitchy soccer mom!! If you lumped her into that category, she'd probably hurt you (she's also a natural redhead & we're all nuts, remember). Oh, and she's got a yellow Mustang since like my father, she likes a car that has "guts".

So, while I do admit to having road rage & that my family does have lead feet at least we will not be the people doing 30 mph on a busy interstate unless there's a damn good reason for it (weather, construction or the traffic in front of us). These are the people other drivers want to kill, especially when they have things to do & there's no reason for it.

Oh, and if you are a man who drives like this? You will NOT pick up women that way!!! You will not impress young chicks & all you will succeed in doing is pissing off the rest of the motorists. Take it from an industry certified hottie. We are also mindful of cops and seek to drive with traffic instead of causing jams & bottlenecks.

This is contrary to the aim of many drivers I see in areas outside of major cities, where you will be gutted like a fish if you cause traffic problems. City cops may even join in if they're not too busy raiding peaceful protests.

Today, my husband & I were traveling to Long Island. He was driving, as he normally does, and we were getting off an exit from one busy parkway to a busy highway. The particular highway we were trying to merge onto was a particularly busy section where cars travel at least 40 mph. Behind my husband is a moron driving a silver SUV.*

* Let me pause this story for a moment to share my feelings on SUV drivers. On the whole, I fucking HATE them. Unless you have a large family, own a business where you have to carry lots of things like a construction company & most importantly, know how to drive one, you've got no business having one. The location issue is irrelevant where I live. I don't mind sitting in them but I would hate driving one since they guzzle gasoline (isn't it high enough?), you can't see well in them & most people can't park them to save their lives (that was said by an ex of mine who owned an SUV; however, he had a painting company & kids so he did have justification to own one). You can't see around them in traffic & I just hate to see them coming. I also agree that it seems many drivers have these vehicles to compensate for a very small penis since they will zoom in them, blast high beams at you if you don't want to be their speed shields & generally behave like pricks on the road, especially in Long Island.

Getting back to the story, this moron nearly rear ends my husband then cuts in front of him. In the middle of this busy highway, the dumbass slows down. My husband tries to pass, figuring maybe he's just some clueless turd who doesn't know where he's going (as there are many in Long Island who will stop in the middle of the street & make no effort to pull over). Dumbass decides to weave in the lanes, slowing down all the while. We're wondering what in God's name is going on when all of a sudden, this idiot stops in the middle of Sunrise Highway! If you are familiar with NY driving, you can already see the absurdity of this.

Then, when you think this story can't get better, the driver comes out of the car and moves toward us. This is some little punk guy, no more than 25 if that. My husband reaches down, tells me to get my phone out (which I do since it's looking like it's time to call the cops on this douche) and I feel for some weapons to make this guy sorry if he dares to try anything.

All of a sudden, before getting too close to our car, the guy turns around, goes back to the car, starts it and continues on like nothing happened. He goes very slowly, heads over to the right hand lane (we were in the left lane & he's had to cross about 2 lanes to get where he goes), then turns off at the VERY FIRST right turn at a major intersection.

I'm watching this guy like a hawk as this goes on because I'm not going to be followed and then harmed.

I wasn't aware of it at the time but my husband said he reached down to make the guy think he was getting a weapon like a gun. He thinks someone was in the SUV & yelled some sense into this hothead so he'd back off. With that quick turning, you have to wonder if this guy may have thought we'd take action.

The answer: hell yes!! Believe it or not, I'm not the sort of person who starts things. As my mom says "Don't start nothing, won't be nothing." My husband is the same way. He was merely trying to merge onto the highway, not tailgating this guy or doing something anyone would consider antagonistic.

But if you fuck with me or my family, you will get yours & I will not be responsible for what happens.

Furthermore, if I ever saw someone even leave a scratch on my spouse, that person would be dead in a heartbeat. My life would no longer have value to me if he was killed or got hurt. No gun or anything would phase me at that point; you could call it the same kind of reaction I had when I saw my ex-friend's husband kick that cat carrier. That fucker would be praying for the police to show up because let me tell you, you don't do that to someone's true love if you don't want to have your nuts chopped off & fed to you or something equally grotesque/scary/disturbing happening.

Especially when that person is already off mentally (you can make this argument for most creative people) & knows they've got no chance at finding anyone who could top that relationship. I would be warning any police officer on that scene that they're going to need to restrain me because I will murder such a person with my bare hands out of uncontrolled rage. If that person fled, it would become my mission to hunt him/her down like a dog & take care of that for my own soul.

I'm sure you'd see empty, soulless eyes if you ever did something like that to us. No one messes w/my man & I know he feels the same about me.

This is why for all my strong views and my "enforcer" cred, I really don't get into fights or conflicts very much. If I have to resort to physical violence, it's going to be one of those "We're taking this to the woodshed & one of us isn't coming back" moments. If I take on any endeavor, it's going to be done right or not at all.

Now if you think I sound scary without even having a gun, imagine how many people on the planet may feel just like me & have far fewer pro-social impulses to obey the law or even basic regard for human beings. Might you want to consider that some person in a car might have a loaded weapon and shoot first, thinking you're going to harm them? Or even just shoot you in rage? I've read & heard enough stories about shootings over parking spaces in mall parking lots to know better than to go approach a stranger like that.

I would dare any law enforcement officer to punish a driver in my husband's situation if (s)he shot or killed someone in the position of this random asshole who stopped in the middle of the highway for no good reason & then got out of his car to approach him/her. I don't recall a law that says potential crime victims have to sit there & take it + I think if it happened, that person would end up like Bernard Goetz (hopefully without the racism aspect though I think an asshole is an asshole is an asshole). I would want to help that person find a good lawyer.

By the way, today's shithead was white. I predict he won't be living much longer if he keeps that up.

I also find it ironic that this happened in Long Island, an area where many people live in fear of the "big, scary city" that is Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn & the Bronx (maybe you can get Long Islanders to go to Staten Island since Staten Island is more suburban than the rest of the boroughs, I don't know). Getting some Long Islanders into NYC is literally like pulling teeth. In fact, those people will swear to you that Long Island is a safe place while NYC is a bastion of crime, violence & in short, a hellhole. Never mind some of the more grizzly crimes that have happened in Long Island, especially recently.

These are the people I think should be trading places with people in the Midwest, the South and other smaller regions where people there would go to NYC all the time if they lived in Long Island but don't have the means to get there. The skittish Long Islanders are wasted living there & should be living in the middle of nowhere or in smaller towns since they'd benefit more from it in my view. I'd have killed for this kind of exchange myself as a North Carolinian who didn't even get to visit NYC until college.

This furthers my belief that Long Island drivers in SUVs are assholes. Now we can add "morons who want to die or serve jail time" to that list. We were about to call the cops but didn't get the plate # & the person didn't follow us so we considered it a win.